


A Brief Guide to Love and Defending the Universe

by doesitneedsaying



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dimension Cannon, and a few surprise appearances, tenxrose mentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27273994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doesitneedsaying/pseuds/doesitneedsaying
Summary: Not content with just being stuck and now watching her new world fall apart around her, Rose Tyler is more determined than ever to get back to the Doctor with the help of those closest to her. Of course, some things are easier said than done.
Kudos: 2





	1. 1.

Rose stood on the beach, staring out into the distance. _Funny how the world can be so calm at a moment like this_ , she thought.

She couldn’t bear to leave. She knew it was impossible, knew it wasn’t going to happen, but there was that voice in the back of her mind telling her to wait. _I’m coming to get you… No. Not to you… Always wait five and a half hours… I’ll see you later…_ She replayed his words over and over in her mind. There were so many times she had thought they would never see each other again, so many times he had promised he’d never leave her behind. So no, she couldn’t just go.

An hour passed. Two hours, four hours, seven hours passed. But nothing happened. With a deep breath Rose got up from the rock she had posted herself at, her legs wobbling as blood rushed back into them. She stood there for just a moment more, her last strand of hope fading away with the wind. Then she walked back to the car where her family had been waiting, defeat hanging heavily over her head.

\--- 

The next day she went back to work. Torchwood. It had taken her a few weeks after arriving in this world to let herself even walk back into that building. And even then she hated it, blamed its existence for trapping her here. But she ached for the adventures and running and danger she had come to love so dearly, so eventually she gave in. She had become reckless, though, not caring if she left a mission alive or dead. It wasn’t until an intervention brought on by Jackie, Mickey, Pete, and Jake that she started pretending to put an effort into surviving.

But beginning today that would different. As soon as she got to her office, Rose cancelled all her meetings and notified Jake and Mickey that she would be unavailable for any missions. Then, with a new determination about her, Rose went down to the archives grabbing every textbook, every video, every plan that might be important to her new project. She sat down and got to work.

Because, you see, the night before, she had a realization. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t possible—it didn’t matter if it couldn’t happen—she was going to get back to the Doctor and nothing was going to stop her. After all, how many times had he come back for her? How many times had he done the impossible for her? So this time she would do it for him.

Over the next few months, Rose hopped back and forth between working at Torchwood and researching at home. She had decided to keep her project a complete secret, even from her own family. As supportive as they had been, Rose wasn’t entirely sure how they would respond to her new hobby. Everyone was trying so desperately to get her to move forward with her life, she could only imagine what they would think of (what they would undoubtedly call) this new setback. And while they all wondered where her newfound genuine care for survival at Torchwood was coming from, no one dared question her about it.

Eventually, though, this project was becoming harder to keep under wraps. Her room was filling up with boxes of research that had to be carefully snuck in and out. And Jackie was becoming overbearing, nearly barging into her room on several occasions. So Rose decided to move out to her own flat. Amid piles of unpacked boxes, Rose set up her work areas. And with the additional space and privacy, she began to expand past the research phase with the help of some stolen (and jiggey pokery’d) Torchwood tech. But after half a year of working on her own, she was only running out of ideas, running out of hope. Until…

Rose was working at home one night, as she always did, when Mickey decided to make a surprise appearance.

“Rose, I know you prolly just wanna spend another night locked in on your own, but I was thinking—” he had started before catching a guilty looking Rose surrounded by a massive clutter of work. The bag of take-out he had brought along dropped to the floor.

“Mickey, it’s— I can explain…” Rose tried, but she was too exhausted to come up with an actual excuse and just let the words hang.

It didn’t take long (if any time at all) for Mickey to put the pieces together. He glanced back at Rose and then did something she absolutely wasn’t expecting.

“What can I do to help?”

From that moment on, they became unstoppable. Mickey’s technological expertise revived the project, and furthermore his support seemed to breathe life back into Rose. For the first time since she had gotten trapped in this world, part of her felt like she was returning back to normal.

It took a while, but finally they found their first tear in the universe. After months of searching, it had just appeared almost out of nowhere. It was tiny and not big enough to fit anything more than a few atoms through it, but it was there nonetheless. That night, the pair celebrated with a bottle of wine and Rose’s first honest to god smile in close to a year.

A few weeks later, another crack appeared. A day later, another one. And a few days later, their scanners picked up two more. They were all still tiny, nonthreatening—and not useful. But there was something odd about it all. After so much time of absolutely nothing, where were all of these cracks coming from? They both felt that gut instinct kick in that something wasn’t right, and after a night of weighing their options they made a decision. It was time to take this to Torchwood.

“So basically, we’ve been working on this project… trying to find new tears in the universe… but lately we’ve been coming across some interesting findings...” Rose sputtered out to the Torchwood board. She wasn’t sure why Mickey had been so insistent on her giving this presentation. Even though she’d been in this world an entire year (all the while proving her worth and always supported by Pete himself), Rose still hadn’t been given a particularly warm welcome. And right now, with eight pairs of judgmental eyes staring at her, that was being made perfectly obvious.

Over the next few hours, there wasn’t a single opinion that wasn’t voiced.

“We have far more important matters to be concerning ourselves with!”

“Wouldn’t it be more harmful to tamper with these cracks than to leave them be? I mean look, they’re tiny! Harmless!”

“Can’t we all be honest about what this whole thing is really about?”

“Can we really trust…” Whenever someone tried to finish that sentence, though, Mickey would stop them in their tracks with a firm glare.

Then it was time to come to a vote, to which the board gave a resounding (and, to Rose, unsurprising) unanimous no. Finally at this, Mickey asked Rose to leave the room. Ten minutes later, he stepped out with a full grin saying he managed to change all of their minds. Rose asked and would always wonder exactly how he did it, but he’d never tell her.

Within another month, they had a proper team and lab set up. And as reluctant and untrusting as the board had been in the beginning, they were quickly changing their tune. With their now infinitely stronger equipment and top notch resources, everyone was quickly learning the problem at hand had turned from a potentially bad mystery to a quite literally earth shattering dilemma.

Because those things Rose and Mickey thought were just tiny little cracks in their universe leading to the void? Oh no, they were so much worse. They were just a few of the million billion holes scattered all throughout their universe, each one bleeding into its own distinct parallel world. There was no more void, no more Hell. Just every universe in existence crashing in on one another.

For the second time in her life, Rose Tyler realized she was witnessing the end of the world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With circumstances being so incredibly dire, the stakes are raised. But will Rose and Mickey be able to save the day before its too late?

Once the realization of what was going on had sunk in, the real work began. Or at least the endless meetings did. Because even the immanent end of the world—no, wait, universe—no wait again, multiverse— was no match for a bloody meeting. But with everyone having their own opinion and no way of knowing who was right, things were getting out of hand. 

After extreme amounts of shouting, fighting, and overall chaos, though, a consensus was reached. They had determined the cause of this problem was happening in another world, so those people, that Torchwood, could deal with that. This Torchwood was going to put all its efforts into sealing off the trouble and keeping themselves safe. But Rose and Mickey knew better, and that night they went back to her flat to continue on.

“Can’t we just rebuild those jump devices?” Rose tried.

“I don’t know if those’d even work now with the void gone. ‘Sides everything from that got destroyed, would take us years to get it back to anything able to work,” Mickey refuted. Then trying himself, “what about time travel? What if we got somethin’ workin’ that could take us back to that day on the beach and at least warn the Doctor then?”

“We can’t cross our own timelines, Mickey, trust me, it’d only make things worse.”

After a night of going over and over through previously rejected and other seemingly impossible plans, the pair were ready to give in. But just in that moment, Rose got a call from Pete telling her to come over to the mansion with Mickey.

\- - -

Pete Tyler, much to no one’s surprise, was not a stupid man. So when he noticed Rose’s change in attitude all those months ago, and saw piles of boxes in her old room through her accidentally cracked open door, and could see just how tired and worn down she (and later on Mickey) had become even through claims of doing nothing outside of work, he knew exactly what was going on. And he had decided to start a project of his own.

In the basement of the Tyler residence was every bit of research and equipment he had stored away and been working on from the dimension jumper project. And when Rose and Mickey saw it, their mouths properly gaped open.

“But I thought…” Mickey barely got out.

“That all this was lost? Being an ex-director of Torchwood has its perks, ya know,” Pete chuckled.

“But why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Rose asked, so completely stunned she wasn’t sure whether to be upset or not.

“I wanted to see if it would work… No use in gettin’ your hopes up if there wasn’t a reason,” he answered directly to Rose, then turning back to Mickey as well, “And then you lot just went off to Torchwood for help, as if that would do you any good! I always told you to come to me first, and I thought you’d have been smart enough to still do that. If you’d only given me another few days you’d never have had to go through all of those twats!”

“Wait so you’re saying it’s… operational?” Mickey walked around the console to investigate a bit further.

“Eh… more like pre-operational. I’ve gotten it to turn back on, but probably not much more. Mind you I haven’t exactly had anyone to test it out—” then turning back to Rose, because he knew exactly what she was about to say, “—and we’re not sending anyone through until we’re as sure as we can be its safe.”

After a brief pause of thought, Rose joined back in. “But without Torchwood, how’re we gonna do this. I mean, this is gonna need a lotta work, and we don’t exactly have the means to get it done all on our own.”

Pete smiled at his daughter. “You leave that to me. Have I mentioned the ex-director thing, yet? Got a handful of favors waitin’ for me all around the world. Figure it’s about time I cash ‘em in.”

\- - -

The next year went by in a whirlwind.

Keeping his word, Pete had gathered enough resources by the very next day for the _real_ real work to begin. Rose and Mickey continued going back and forth between work at the mansion and Torchwood with plans of phasing out the latter slowly, so to keep suspicions at bay. And Jake had eagerly joined as the official inside man on all upper level Torchwood dealings. It was exhausting, it was difficult, it was frustrating, it was impossible. But it had to be done.

Out of everyone, Rose was surely the most desperate to succeed. There wasn’t a single work session she missed or even a tiny aspect of the project she wasn’t actively involved in. Even when they were at a stand still, she would refuse to stop. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been home, couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent more than five minutes with Jackie or Tony, couldn’t even remember the last time she’d done anything but work. But none of that mattered. She had a multiverse to save… and a Doctor to get back to.

Half a year in and hundreds of destroyed testing fruits later, success had finally arrived: they were ready for the first stage of human testing on the newly named dimension cannon. Rose was of course the first to volunteer as guinea pig, but Pete and Mickey quickly nixed that. She had been the most brilliant one in the room these past months, and if anything happened to her there was a good chance the project wouldn’t make it to the next stage in time. They considered recruiting a Torchwood grunt, but that idea was pretty much chucked out the same moment it was spoken. In the end, Mickey volunteered to do the job.

Mickey stepped onto the platform, looking down at a solemn Rose. “See you in Hell,” he smiled and gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Pete entered the coordinates into the console, the countdown started, the cannon powered up, the bright light filled the room, and with a loud boom, Mickey was gone.

And then he was back! Just a few feet away on the other side of the room.

“Miss me?” he smiled again.

Rose grinned back. Not only was Mickey alright, but the cannon worked! Sure it wasn’t enough to get them outside the basement, let alone the universe, but that wasn’t important right now. Rose’s mind was flooded with pure joy, and she let that feeling glow inside her for one beautiful moment before getting back to work.

With each week that passed by, the cannon was only becoming more successful. A few weeks after their first shift, they could transport themselves to the other side of the world. And a month after that, it could take them to another planet entirely. It was enough to make Rose cry, standing on a new planet once again. She took the few moments she had there to genuinely enjoy the ground beneath her feet. For all their progress, though, they knew it was the next part that would be the hardest. Jumping within your own universe was one thing, but actually getting to another… Again, they were at an impossible impasse. But they kept going.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and all they had to show for it was more scorched tester fruits. And now after so much failure, everyone was starting to get to the end of their ropes. The stars had been going out for some time now, and the world around them was just beginning to decay into madness. According to Jake, even Torchwood was out of real ideas. Rose, Mickey, and Pete knew time was running out sooner rather than later, and that they were everyone’s last hope. It had understandably turned stress levels to high and patience to zero. And that was before they even accounted for their extreme exhaustion.

Then one night, one beautiful night, something finally went right. Rose was the only one in the basement, just tinkering around. And then there was a warm little feeling in the back of her mind telling her to take a chance… so she did. She sent the fruit through the cannon and— it disappeared. But it wasn’t just gone, according to every piece of information the console was spitting out it was in another world! For a moment Rose could only stand there, mouth gaped open. She looked around, ready to celebrate with someone until she remembered she was all alone.

Then, her mind coming back to her, she frantically powered the cannon up again and brought it back. Rose hesitated for just a moment, then moved towards it. She held the pineapple in her hand. It hadn’t exploded or caught fire, its DNA was still perfectly in-tact. It had gone through the cannon and into another universe and then came back completely unscathed! And that was all the proof she needed.

Rose sped back over to the console and started inputting information. Every shift required someone standing by the console to activate the cannon to send the subject off and then reactivate it to bring them back. But Rose had a trick up her sleeve. Near the start of the project, she had secretly installed an automatic pilot protocol, meaning she could send herself off and then the console would automatically bring her back a few minutes later. She knew Pete and Mickey would be upset with her the moment they found out what she’d done, knew it probably wasn’t the smartest decision she’d ever make in her life, but she didn’t care. With one last flip of a switch, she ran over and hopped up onto the platform, closed her eyes, and within one deep breath, she felt the cannon working around her. There was brightness, loud banging, the world shifting all around her and then—

Everything was still. She felt a gentle breeze stroke against her cheek, heard something like squawking in the distance. Rose opened her eyes to a purple sky in a field of tall, fiery red grass. She smiled.

“Doctor, I’m comin’ to get you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all!
> 
> Told you ch 2 would be right around the corner :) it will be a bit longer to get to ch 3 since I haven't actually written it yet, but hopefully I'll have it ready in the next week or so.
> 
> If you like what you've read or have constructive criticism to impart, feel free to leave a comment. Feedback is always appreciated! xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! 
> 
> Hope you've enjoyed the first chapter of this soon-to-be four part story! Next chapter will be coming very, very soon!
> 
> If you like what you've read or have some constructive criticism to impart feel free to leave a comment. Any feedback is always appreciated! xoxo


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